Talk of heroism and readiness to die for the nation are stock in trade of sports as much of warfare and it will be easy to accuse the players of the Togo national team of lacking nationalist scruples in demanding their promised bonuses before kicking off their World Cup. In fact the Togo bonus saga is emblematic of the relationship between Togo's self serving autocracy and the population at large. The bonus dispute has undermined what should be a happy occasion for the Togolese team and their long-suffering compatriots.

The World Cup is a bonus moment par excellence. Corporate sponsors (global and national), media firms, advertisers, football agents, pundits, betting firms, kit makers, souvenir makers, etc. are all laughing to the bank. This is also a golden PR moment for the politicians in all 32 participating countries; it does not matter if in the preceding period you have failed to improve the lot of your people, time to bask in the reflected glory of the achievement of the national team and weave that into your longevity. What the players, many of them, like the Togolese players, poor kids made good, will earn is a small drop in the profit pool of this most globalised of global events.

As populations unite behind their national teams what the players are paid matters less than the fact that their countries are among the elite of the world's most popular game. That for half of them, Togo most likely among them, there will be no more than 270 minutes of group action does not matter. True €155,000 for what is likely to be no more than 270 minutes of exertion is beyond the wildest imagination of not only the overwhelming majority of Togolese but the overwhelming majority of the world's population. The quantum and immediacy of the players demand has to be understood within the context of Togolese politics.

For close to 40 years the Togolese people have endured one of the most brutal and rapacious family dictatorships in recent history. Gnassingbe Eyadema, in power from 1967 till his death last year, and his son Faure Gnassingbe, in power since his father's death, have created a regime which embodies all that makes any appeals to the nationalism of football players or anyone else a bad joke. A small ruling clique wields power with impunity and lives in great opulence while the majority do not enjoy anything near the official £206 per capita. Why should young men who have known nothing but two generations of cynical abuse and self serving use of public power be expected to make sacrifices for a cause which will generate oxygen for the Gnassingbe Eyadema dynasty?

In Togo the Eyadema family has turned the nation into a private fiefdom where the line between the public realm of national office and private family arrangements disappeared long ago. Faure's brother Kpatcha is minister of defence, another Rock heads the Togolese FA. In the years of Eyadema pere the national anthem run a poor second to songs extolling his greatness, a greatness visible in the misery of every life in Togo, including of unpaid civil servants. Faure succeeded his father (initially imposed by the military, presumably as per arrangements made by the old tryant, before retreating and routing him through controversial elections).

Making grand promises, ultimately unfulfilled, to the population is a feature of all politics; offering selective inducements to sections of the electorate is widespread and shades into blatant cases of nepotism and corruption. For a regime short on the oxygen of popular legitimacy Togo's World Cup participation is a large unexpected canister of the vital stuff. However the old habit of taking the population for granted has reared its head in the handling of the players' expectations.

Faure Gnassingbe opened a new multi-million dollar presidential palace last April. The backdrop to the construction included at least 500 Togolese being killed in protests against the elections that installed Faure as his father's successor. Those killed around the elections are the latest in a long line of Togolese who have died so as to live in a nation rather than an Eyadema fiefdom. The bonus dispute when seen only through the prism of money looks like a narrow fight over spoils but it is actually a metaphor for Togo's political history. In the traditions of Togolese politics a concession to the players on their bonus demand would be a rare victory over a regime used to having its way.